


Your taste

by Austrianity



Category: Death Note
Genre: Bitterness, Falling In Love, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Romance, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-23
Updated: 2015-05-23
Packaged: 2018-03-31 20:35:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3991882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Austrianity/pseuds/Austrianity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a sad one-shot outlining L's one-sided attraction towards Light. It also illustrates the fight between Kira and Light, although this fight may exist only in L's head. It is also a fight between friendship and love, as L has to fight to control his feelings, is confused and left alone. It's sad and absolutely fits the weather today! (Rainy, grey, cold...)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your taste

#  Your taste 

Unnerving. Heartwrecking. Dark, distant drums on the window panes, leaving him drenched in noise and thoughts and his own heartbeat. 

It almost felt like home. 

L lay awake, black eyes staring into the black, experiencing white, sullen white wrenching him down to his bones. In his brilliant mind a question spun forwards and backwards like a spinning leaf, a question. And he felt frozen, not able to catch the answer. Not able to think. 

How? 

L had never felt alone. It was his nature to be a loner. He was used to it; and also was it part of his being. Loneliness came like breathing, natural to him, unquestionable. And yet... he felt empty. Like something was missing. Like someone had suddenly torn his body, mind and soul - did he possess such a thing? - open, leaving him bleeding out this unnerving whiteness, humming with the distant drum of rain against his window. 

And so there he lay, wondering and not wondering, his mind for once silent, resenting him. Absentminded he touched his wrist, with shy, trembling fingers, the touch ever so lightly. There it was. A sensation. He registered the unpleasantly warm rush of light pain, as his fingers touched the roughened skin where the handcuffs had cut into his wrist. 

L had never been a sentimental or emotional one, especially not towards other human beings. Animals were different - but except Watari nobody knew how fond he was of animals. They were pure. They were innocent even in their cruellest activities. A cat would murder a mouse coldheartedly, would scratch his skin rough and bloody while playing with him, but a cat had no fault in her actions. If there were no humans this planet would be flourishing and beautiful. Humans were the root of all evil. One could try so hard to be a good person. But it never changed anything. Humans were evil. Children were different... it was one of the mysteries that had had L occupied since he was young - when exactly did children become adults and therefore evil? It seemed to be connected to their education and upbringing, but nonetheless... humans were full of guilt. Animals and children were the contrary; they were good, pure, innocent. They lived up to the expectations of a world whom they did not try to change so frantically as humans did... 

Thunder rolled, and lightning flashed, lighting up the dark room in these early morning hour, adding a real white to the whiteout occupying his entire mind. A thought flashed too... maybe this was the reason. There had to be a reason. Everything had a reason - the world consisted of action and reaction, of reasons! 

This was the worst part of it. L could accept that he felt emotionally attached to another human being that was not Watari, who was somehow in disunion between a fatherly figure and a mere assistant. L could even accept the unfamiliar strength of this emotional attachment... but everything, everything he was bridled at the thought of this not having a reason. 

So, maybe there it was... the reason he had wanted so badly, a craving comparable to his brain's craving for sugar. His dry, chapped lips broke into a wry smile. He wasn't himself today, he could see that clearly. Even thinking about the percentages of probability made his head ache, as if it refused to take the reins over his heart again. All he could be sure of was "maybe". This was extraordinarily unsatisfying. 

Still, it was all he had got... Maybe. Maybe it was his similarity to an animal, innocent in its cruellest actions, delighting in unknowingly done damage, simply believing - or rather, not even thinking about the rightness of his actions - 

Maybe it was Kira's animalistic and childish traits that made him fall in love with this monster. 

What a perfect match... L, the ingenious, socially depraved detective, the lonely, abandoned child in the body of a 24 year old, the world's best, second- best and third-best hope of winning - no, not of winning, more of playing! - the game against crime and injustice, and Kira, the soulless, socially not less depraved, childish, cruel beast torturing the world and L's nerves... a perfect match indeed, he thought dryly, a monster for a monster, a soulless machine for a soulless machine... 

He needed it, he craved it, so bad! He needed to feel. To inhale the sensation of ANYTHING. He needed... to live! L felt dead or dying, he did not really care anymore. He had become every bit of the lifeless, loveless, cracked shell he knew some of his subordinates saw in him. He felt like a machine, cold and methodical, only driven by the last small spark of curiosity. 

He would have never admitted it, but the Kira-case had wrecked him. It had wrenched him like a curious child would tear apart the wrapping paper of a new toy, it had torn him - since Light Yagami had entered their investigation. 

Light Yagami. Kira. In his current state of mental whiteout L couldn't really tell the probability of Light being Kira, but he was sure of it. Light, to whom L had become attached to, Light, whom he now claimed to be his only friend. And Kira, who was Light, who definitely was Kira, whom he fell in love with, step by step, since Light had entered his life. 

"Entered" was a kind word. Light had torn the beshielding shells of his privacy and work open, had forced his personality upon L, had tramped the glass walls of L's protective cage down. 

Another lightning flashed. What a weather... it really fit his mood and state of mind. But the ever-present rain against his window slowly drummed the craving in him awake again. A craving which he had managed to suppress through methodical, logical and active not-emotion-lead thinking in the Kira-case so far. But today the craving grew too strong. It overwhelmed him; him, addicted to a thought and a word, addicted to his arch-enemy, addicted to the unhealthy, noxious, violent relationship he silently had with the thought of Kira. 

Mechanically he stood up, placed his cold feet on the cool floor, walking slowly, hunched as always, towards the window pane. Blurry, was all he thought, blurry. Shadows casted each other beneath the blurriness of the wet window, stained with raindrops, shimmering like translucent blood. In love, he thought lifelessly, in love with a thought and a word. How pathetic. In love with a mere thought! With one single word... L pressed his lips to the cold, heat-drinking window and exhaled. It was a breath, not more, a slow, trembling breath that formed the word: 

"Kira." 

L got his left arm in the right position to knock, but let the thought fall again. How did I get here?, he wondered idly, and another wry, small smile tore his lips apart. What a day... 

L entered the room without knocking. The door opened, opened once again for him, showed him the sparse room humble Watari had to himself. He was there as well, as always. Watari turned around and saw him standing there. No surprise was seen on his face, but L knew he was surprised, he could see Watari's worry in the way his suit wrinkled above his knee, in the way his old skin paled in the light of the monitor in front of him. 

"Ryuuzaki." Watari said, and his voice expressed his concern through controlled steadiness. "Is everything alright?" 

A long silence followed, and L read Watari like Watari read L - L could have sung out Watari's concern and care for him opera-style, so clear and plain it was to him. Watari, on the other hand, could physically feel the desperation L radiated like body heat. 

The long silence stretched, grew thin and permeable. Finally, L spoke. "No." he said simply. Watari gave a short nod. L briefly made eye-contact, then asked: "Could I have some of tomato salad?" 

This silence was puzzled, L could tell. But steady as ever, Watari answered: "Of course. It will be ready in a few minutes. If you like, I'll bring it up to your room." L nodded. "Thank you, Watari." He locked his black eyes with Watari's old ones - "Thank you." he said in a low voice. Then he left. 

Just seconds after L had entered his room again came Watari's polite knock. "Come in." L said calmly. Watari stepped in, a small bowl of red, wet, sliced tomatoes and onions and a small bottle of vinegar in his hands. "Thanks." said L, and Watari silently placed the bowl and the bottle onto the bedside table. Watari looked at him. "I have not added any vinegar to it because I know you don't like it sour..." he said, and L could hear some confusion in his voice. "Thanks." he said again, took the vinegar and poured a good deal of it over the glistening tomatoes. Another puzzled silence, though only short. Then Watari couldn't help but ask. "Ryuuzaki, why do you want to eat sour tomato salad all of a sudden?" 

L's glance was fixed on the circles and patches the oil painted in the vinegar-and-water-fluid that soaked the tomatoes and onions. He chewed on his thumb, as always, and tried to find an answer. When he found it, it sounded feeble and shaking. "I need to feel something." 

L looked up and could see the words Watari left unspoken ringing in the air between them: Oh, my boy. 

Watari gave another short nod. "Call on me if you need anything else, Ryuuzaki." he said and left the room. 

The first bite was unpleasant, it was attacking all of his mouth with the stinging sourness of the vinegar. Like he had wished! Another bite, and the stinging acid seemed to kill everything sweet that had ever left traced on his tongue. Just like he had wanted it. 

L did not bother to take another bite, he just took a sip of the water-oil-and-vinegar-emulsion. Sour, sour, so sour it stung out every other sensation, like he wanted to kill every trace of Light Yagami, his friend, and overwhelm himself with Kira. But simultaneously it was the other way round - he wished to extinguish every thought of Kira, evaporate everything within Light Yagami that was Kira, so they could be friends, and the world could be safe, and L could be peaceful again. 

Silent prayers formed in his head: 

Please, please, please... be Kira. I beg you, be Kira. Light, please, be Kira. I crave you. I need you! 

Please... under no circumstances, under NO CIRCUMSTANCES be Kira! Please, god, have mercy. Light isn't Kira. Make it true. Make Light be just Light. I beg you. Make my friend be normal, make him be no monster. Make Kira vanish, and take this stupid feelings I feel with him. 

He was irrational, and he knew it. But for once, he did not care. 

It was the same day, hours later, in another world. The screens flashed with a steady, non-revealing screen saver - Watari was dead, L knew it instantly. He did not hear the words he spoke, he did not feel the chill deep in his skin. 

But the world went all red and blue and painful and silent as he felt his heart encased by an unforgiving hand, pressing it into death. His ears ringed, ringed with Watari's unspoken fatherly love, ringed with Light's real friendship, ringed with his own, depraved, masochistic, crazy love for Kira, ringed with... 

The bell. It had caught up on him, finally. 

And then he looked into Light's eyes, and they turned into Kira's eyes. L felt the taste in his mouth go from sweet to sour. 

And if he could have managed, he would have smiled. 

And if he could have managed, he would have voiced his thanks. 

And if he could have managed, he would have died without feeling torn between relief and regret. 

The world grew dark around those honey-coloured eyes that held his gaze hostage. White crept into his brain, drenching all the pain from him, leaving him feeling light, flying, floating, fleeing. He was cast away like a shadow by a sudden burst of Light.

It was over.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed it :)   
> please leave a comment! I'd love to improve. Thanks for reading this!
> 
> Note: English is not my native language... (I'm Austrian - no kangaroos^^) therefore I apologize for mistakes^^ leave a comment to help improving this text. Thanks!


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